


bones of metal

by beeclaws



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Angst, Character Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-13
Updated: 2016-11-13
Packaged: 2018-08-30 19:28:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8546179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beeclaws/pseuds/beeclaws
Summary: Percy wants a lot of things all at once. He does not want Vax to trust him. He is trying very hard not to want Vax to trust him.





	

Percy wants a lot of things at once.  
  
He does not actually want for Vax to trust him. If he had his way no one in his life would trust him completely, or he’d become worthy enough for them to be able to (worthy enough is far out of reach, and perhaps always will be).  
  
But this can work too, where the others trust him and Vax watches him. Even if it hurts when he remembers that it’s Vax, Vax who he loves, Vax who he wants so badly to iron out and fix and simultaneously for him to never change at all. It all makes sense when it’s cogs in a machine, these trust him and this one does not, but the reality is a splintered wound he doesn’t know how to close.  
  
Percy does not know what to do with wounds. He is not a cleric nor a true mage nor even a field medic: he has watched his friends pull people from the brink of death and learned nothing at all. His powers are a scar bleeding out into the world, an accident drawn from a monster’s blood. Percy is a poor student of anything but metal and dust, the one-time accompaniment to a ritual of light. For a few moments on a courtyard-turned-battlefield he was clear-voiced and proud, but all they were is moments. He does not know how to heal what has occurred between himself and Vax’ildan: that was never the game being played here. He is a general making use of the resources at his disposal: minimize the fallout. Do not be fooled by sentiment: these are the odds you have been given.  
  
So he loves Vax, even when he remembers that Vax does not trust him, even when he slips back into viewing him as a thing to be mended, refined, made brighter and cleaner. Wipe away the dust, line the rusted joints with oil and Vax would be a thing to be reckoned with, Vax could alter realms (Vax has already irrevocably altered him, reconfigured all his insides, and who is Percy to tell him who to be anyway, Percy who knows only how to fix everything that doesn’t matter and break everything that does).

Percy loves Vax. Percy asked Vax not to trust him. Vax acquiesced with depressing ease, even if he can’t help but worry at the wound from time to time. This is workable. This is a useful safeguard that might limit the blast radius next time Percy disappoints his friends and the ghosts of his family.  
  
The physicality is what makes him doubt: Vax as an abstract is easy to understand, easy to mold new and wish away the parts that drag him down. (Percy may have only worn the skull of a bird but he knows that to fly you must throw off dead weight, rid yourself of ballast, learn how to streamline. He does not think Vax has accepted this, or perhaps he does not give him enough credit, and Percy is part of the ballast). Vax as the man standing before him, however, is harder to reckon with: his soft frown, his twisting fingers…Percy tries to stop looking at Vax, for the most part. He turns away his gaze and doubles down. This is workable. This is the only way things can be.  
  
Besides, even if he asked for Vax’s trust again, Vax would not give it. Vax is many things but he is not that foolish, not anymore. Even Percy cannot deny him that. So all of this is…moot. It is the way things must be.  
  
He will tell himself this every day until he believes it, or until something breaks.


End file.
